Brief Moments of Honesty from Otherwise Dishonest People

            Your band sucks. Even through cell phone speakers, barely audible in a crowded bar, she realizes this truth, but her mouth is bound by courtesy. Your band is fucking terrible. It’s all she can think, anticipating the moment when the timer on his iPhone playlist reaches 0:00. She no longer notices the smell of sweat, the distressing and dank atmosphere of her surroundings, the heat, the discomfort of the wooden stool beneath her. All other senses are overridden by the noise, the clamor of countless other conversations around her and the I-IV-V chord progression playing faintly underneath them. Is he bobbing his head to his own song? He can’t be …
            “What do you think”

            “What do I think?”

            “Of the song?”

            “I can’t really hear it.”

            “Do you like it?”

            “It’s good.”       

How Thoreau Might Have Behaved on ChatRoulette

Reading your own work as writer is like masturbating, though for him it was a little less messy, a little less fulfilling, a little more obvious. He wondered if this was how the greats might have felt, if there was some sort of singularity between the writing experiences of all writers. Then, he drifted through them, inhabiting their flesh, reading their words, metaphysical sticking his hands down their (and his) metaphysical pants and underpants.

It was all very odd, strange indeed.